They see 4 Batmans in politics – №1 is the strongest, №2 and №4 want to beat him, №3 keeps his back
The United States cannot remove the malicious oligarchy from the political, economic and media turnover, this is our task
The idea of the dreaded accusations against Borissov is not to prove them, but to tell and inflate hatred.
The general’s melee made the Bulgarian public a hot battlefield, surrounded by trenches, mines and barbed wire
Why do children in transition experience themselves as an excluded, discriminated and exploited group in the state built by their parents? This and other awkward questions need to be asked
– The pandemic and the crisis in the country gave birth to antipodes – GERB and anti-GERB, parties of the status quo and the protest, generational battles young – old in politics. What leadership do these warring groups produce, Mr. Alexandrov?
– In a pandemic, individuals and society as a whole go through a process of mental regress, in which fears and anxieties take precedence over the rational perception of reality and unlock primitive defense mechanisms such as denial, disunity, projection, idealization, etc. In conditions of constant insecurity and intense stress a person begins to lose the ability to maintain a complex and nuanced picture of the world and in his mind it breaks down into good and bad halves, ours and yours, friends and enemies, villains and fighters against evil. The ultimate form of this phenomenon is paranoia and the feverish search for conspiracies. Instead of understanding and making sense of reality, people experience it directly as a threat. This mental situation creates excellent conditions for political polarization, which can escalate into radicalization and destructive conflict.
– Don’t we live in such a period and at the moment?
– Fortunately, the most acute period of the COVID crisis is over and I hope it will never happen again. We have come out of the lockdown, fewer and fewer people are getting sick, more and more are recovering and getting vaccinated. Social life is recovering, people are meeting and traveling again, children are going to school, etc. The best news is that the Bulgarian economy has handled the crisis surprisingly well – data from the first quarter are optimistic, as are the expectations of economic agents. Of course, there are severely affected sectors such as tourism that will need support and special recovery policies, but overall the crisis is over. There are no objective reasons for panic, but people are still very anxious, to the point of panic attacks. My hypothesis is that at the moment the tension and high background anxiety are generated by the sharp political conflict, which is overexposed in the media and distorts the real picture.
– How does this affect the most active people in the country – entrepreneurs, government officials at various levels in the institutions of central and local government?
– It is people in leadership roles who are most worried lately, because they have a responsibility to translate their organizations through the crisis and to protect employees. It is important for them to have, if not stability, at least predictability, and that is exactly what is lacking at the moment. Ordinary people are not directly affected by this – they think about the sea, leisure and football, and will only worry if their incomes shrink or, God forbid, bankruptcies and redundancies begin.
Until then, the dynamics are as follows – politicians involved in the battle for power generate tension and insecurity, employers and managers take it and keep it as long as they can, and the people do not care and have fun. In such conditions, one of the main functions of leadership is blocked – to provide security and direction, keeping and processing the anxiety of the inevitable change. If there’s one thing that really worries me, it’s that
the bosses of
hospitals are among
the most worried leaders. At the moment, they feel unjustly attacked because after the grueling battle with the pandemic, they receive suspicions and accusations instead of gratitude.
– “Scratching”, “cleaning”, “broom” seem to have become synonymous with change. Is that what people wanted?
– This is the rhetoric, and now the practice, of the victorious revolution, which meets the expectations of its radicalized supporters. Some people have demanded just that, and they are politically very important to the protest parties, which are fighting for a bigger piece of power. This is good to remember when we comment on the aggressive behavior of politicians like Boyko Rashkov, this unstoppable Dzerzhinsky of civil society. Behind every rabid Dzerzhinsky – or Jedi, according to the Capital newspaper – are not just personal revenge, power accounts and economic interests, but also real public attitudes. I don’t justify it, I just explain.
– For 10 years we have been ruled by a general, and now through the caretaker government – another who, according to political scientists, is experienced as a mentor to the next parliamentary majority. Why does the strong hand prevail?
– We can safely say that the leadership is delegated to a group of generals – adding to Borisov and Radev the caretaker Prime Minister Yanev, Gen. Atanasov and gen. Mutafchiiski, becomes a whole party. The militarization of leadership is understandable in the conditions of a total political war, in which we have been for almost a year. The warring parties are attacking, retreating, shelling, regrouping, and so on. The situation is increasingly spiraling out of control, the horizon is shortening, long-term strategies are being abandoned at the expense of tactical moves, actions are becoming increasingly panicky and chaotic.
Unfortunately, this war turned the Bulgarian public into a hot battlefield, surrounded by trenches, mines and barbed wire. At the moment, a truce seems impossible and damage is inevitable.
– Aren’t the authorized generals the personification of the long-standing longings of the Bulgarian with a strong hand?
– They are the embodiment of the decline of liberal democracy and confidence in civic leadership.
Generalskoto
melee is a lot
a clear sign for
group regression
The regressed community always empowers a strong figure – a leader with a firm hand to support the fantasy of collective salvation without individual effort and responsibility. It’s just that the losers of globalization have become too much and too angry and have begun to organize themselves politically to resist change. This is happening everywhere, and it comes to us with some delay and brings the charm of the Balkan political culture.
– There is a lot of talk about striving to change our parliamentary republic into a presidential one. Are we going that way?
– I am not convinced that the president or his entourage has such a perfidious plan, much less that they have the capacity to implement it. Rather, we are witnessing a spontaneous regression of the political system, which we do not know where it will stop. It is worrying that the systemic parties are in a crisis, which is especially visible in the BSP. The retreat of traditional parties, increasingly called “status quo parties,” opens up wonderful opportunities for the rise of exotic political projects of the populist type. The obvious alternative to a parliamentary republic is a presidential regime that would limit the rampant parties and “restore power to the people.” The problem with these types of regimes is that they usually end in restricting democracy and perpetuating the power of the oligarchy.
– Sociologist Boryana Dimitrova commented that Borisov is now as satanized as Ivan Kostov used to be. But can the charges against him be proven?
– The idea of the terrible accusations is not to be proved, but to be convincingly told. Then be picked up by social networks to inflate hatred and manipulate public sentiment. Hate production is a favorite method of political propaganda because it gives quick results. But it also has devastating side effects – it destroys trust in elites, destroys community ties, deepens conflicts and destroys the nation’s mental health. More and more people are realizing this and gradually
distance themselves
from the political
battles, for yes
be protected
from madness
– Will Slavi Trifonov and his “There is such a nation”, which won the trust of young people, become a center of power?
– He has every chance if he becomes the leader of the youth revolt against parents and their imperfect world. He is strategically positioned as an expression of the protest mood of young people, and the revolutionary pathos is a trademark of his show. The more important question is why young Bulgarians are so angry and dissatisfied, why they feel and behave like losers who cannot find a place in society. Where does communication between generations fail, what do parents fail to do for their children? Why do children in transition experience themselves as an excluded, discriminated and exploited group in the state built by their parents? These are awkward questions, but they need to be asked.
– More and more often young people say: “The state does nothing for me, it will not do anything. It is superfluous – let’s get rid of it! ” Not “to fix it”, but “to remove it”. Why?
– This is the old utopia of anarchism – the beautiful fantasy that we can live freely and happily in a world without empowered institutions and social hierarchies. The longing for powerlessness is the complete opposite of the longing for strong authoritarian power. Anarchism is very tempting for young people who build an identity through rebellion against existing rules and restrictions. Some people never manage to outgrow this stage in their mental development and remain angry teenagers all their lives – these are the eternal rebels you can see at every protest. The task of parents is to introduce children to the world of adults, explaining to them the meaning and functions of state power – not to create and care for dependent people, but to protect the weak from the arbitrariness of the strong. It is good for parents to take on this task, instead of muttering that young people are lazy and spoiled users – who made them?
– How will these moods pour into the ballot box on July 11?
– They will most likely pour out in a spontaneous, uninformed and naive way. And they will drive a change that is unlikely to lead to more freedom. The rebellion of young people against the power of the fathers usually gives birth to a more repressive power. As we know from history,
the gravediggers
of the liberal
democracy
they are always irreconcilable young people, inspired by heroic causes.
– Do young people understand the meaning of politics and political leadership?
– This is a generation that grew up with Marvel movies, which perceives politics as a comic book plot. In their minds, the leader must have the characteristics of a superhero. Here is how a young friend described the current political situation: “There are four Batmans in Bulgaria: Batman №1 is Boyko Borisov, Batman №2 is Rumen Radev, Batman №3 is Ivan Geshev, and Batman №4 is Slavi Trifonov. Batman №1 is the strongest, but Batman №2 and Batman №4 have agreed to fuck him. However, he does not give up because Batman №3 guards his back. ”
When I asked what it takes to qualify for Batman, the young political scientist explained that
you must be
very strong, to be with
bare head and yes
they show on
television
Indeed, all participants in the Batman saga meet these fundamental requirements.
– And which of the Batmans is the United States helping with sanctions against oligarchs and politicians?
– The US government is once again trying to help Bulgarian society by showing how oligarchic interests corrupt the political process and put national security at risk. But it cannot directly bring the malevolent oligarchy out of the economic, political and media turnover, that is our task.
CV
* Born in 1967 in Sofia
* He graduated in Bulgarian philology at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski ”
* He has a PhD in Anthropology in Bulgaria and in Organizational Studies in the UK
* He is a lecturer at NBU
– .
